Key Elements of Restaurant Business
Owning or running a successful restaurant business requires a lot of hard work, but hard work alone cannot guarantee success. It is one component out of many other elements required.
There is unhealthy competition in the restaurant market of different cities right now. People open their restaurants without any knowledge of the hospitality business and how to run and sustain it in the long run. They may make quick money in the first couple of months, but the lack of knowledge will show itself after that. That is why many restaurants are failing these days. A restaurant business is not a quick money-minting business; it requires continuous effort and engagement through different channels with the target audience.
The restaurant needs to provide at least the basic requirements, such as toilet paper in the restroom or hand sanitizers. I would also say that opening a restaurant without parking is a big mistake. Almost everyone has a vehicle in the city, and since people are eating out more often, the lack of parking can be very demotivating for customers. Just having cooking skills or passion for food is not enough to run a restaurant. Lastly, any successful restaurant gives people what they want rather than forcing people to have what the restaurant wants to give. If necessary, balance the choices between what the customer wants while still maintaining options for the customers to try new things. You need to have satisfied customers to maintain a consistent flow of customers. If the customer leaves feeling unsatisfied, that will harm your business.
Hire a Good Chef:
You can’t open a new restaurant without knowing food like the back of your hand. You may have the best equipment for a restaurant or a good head for business, but if you don’t have a good chef, none of that will matter. Hiring a qualified chef for your restaurant is a challenge, but despite the obstacles, it's a vital part of your business's ability to succeed. A chef assists in training new staff, oversees cooking processes, develops menus, and provides input in marketing decisions that affect the restaurant. A professional chef knows how to purchase, prepare, and preserve food to ensure that the restaurant only serves the best quality products to your customers.
Staffs:
If you want to run a successful restaurant, your staff will be the number one factor in keeping guests coming back. The kitchen staff is the backbone of a restaurant, while your front of house crew is the public face and persona. While guest experience is number one in the hospitality business, it cannot exist without a happy, motivated and devoted staff.
In order to hire and retain the best possible staff for your restaurant, you should:
- Create a hiring method that aligns with your personal values and hire your staff based on those key traits.
- Show your staff that you appreciate them through appropriate pay raises, outings, acknowledgments and more.
- Identify stressors in the workplace and work to eliminate them.
- Measure tenure and provide a path for growth within the company.
- Conduct periodic check-ins or send out staff surveys to keep your finger on the pulse of staff satisfaction.
Smart Menu Planning:
A restaurant’s menu is its biggest magnet In order to build a loyal group of patrons, restaurants need to create a unique, fairly priced menu that offers fresh and reliable food and drink options,
The menu’s design makes it more eye-catching. From an aesthetic standpoint, the menu’s colors and font selection should be on-brand and easily identifiable with the restaurant – whether it’s on the restaurant’s website or if it’s a printed menu in a guest’s hand. Categorize different dishes into sections on the menu like (soups & Salads. Apps & Starters, Mains & Sides, Our Specials, Desserts)
Seamless Guest Experience:
The guest experience must be seamless and immersive from beginning to end. Parking, seating, service, food and drink quality, the payment process, their departure and all interactions with staff and management in between must be on point. The goal is to exceed expectations in each individual step. When a restaurant fails to meet expectations, even in one category, it can potentially ruin a guest’s entire experience and receive a negative review.
If a mistake is made, acknowledge and fix it. Hospitality Business/job is to make sure there’s a happy ending to every story, even if that means that the guest felt like management heard and responded appropriately to a complaint.
Keep is Consistent:
Maintaining guest loyalty and increasing the frequency of visits is a key step in maximizing your sales. In order to develop those long-term frequent regulars, and even your more infrequent guests, your restaurant needs to be consistent with the service, atmosphere and, most importantly, the food.
It’s also important to be consistent with your staff when it comes to training, rules, consequences and rewards. Consistency defines and manages expectations. It tells both guests and the staff that you can trust us, that we’re not going to surprise you or pull the rug from beneath you.
Understand Your Brand:
Successful restaurant branding can set your eatery apart, giving it a memorable ambiance that guests will want to experience time again.
You should know your restaurant’s brand like the back of your hand. Don’t try to be all things to all people. If there are already five versions of your concept in your market, people won’t be eager to try another. Peoples want something unique.
One thing that I would like to advice --. I see a lot of restaurants fail to find their identity. They have Nepali name but serve foreign food, where is that idea coming from? They also need to ensure that customers leave the restaurant feeling satisfied with what they have paid for and naturally, their services will reach a wider audience through satisfied customers.
Create Strong Social Media Presence:
Your guests are on social media, and you should be too. Social media is a crucial part of running a modern business, to help you expand your customer base and turn first-time visitors into consistent regulars.
And, a social media strategy whether it's as simple as always posting photos of your specials and promotions across every channel, or you're leveling up and promoting your posts on your best-performing platforms is a crucial part of your restaurant marketing strategy.
Think about how to make every inch of your restaurant 😃Instagrammable😋, whether it’s a piece of decor or a place setting. If it doesn’t catch the eye, think about what tweaks would make it more interesting. You can manage the accounts yourself or enlist a savvy staff member to take control of posting of authentic pictures and videos.
Market Strategy:
Marketing is one of the essential key elements of a successful restaurant business. In its most basic form, marketing is of two types- Online Marketing and Offline Marketing.Online Marketing: Online marketing or digital marketing is considered to be more popular as well as an effective way to reach out to customers. It primarily consists of social media marketing, email and SMS marketing, and a growing online presence.
Offline Marketing: Hosting events, local advertising, distributing pamphlets, etc. are some of the ways of doing offline marketing for your restaurant.
Highlight your Restaurant's Unique Quality:
It always helps to have something special to you that gives people something to talk about and a reason to come back. With social media, it is increasingly important to be photogenic with fun, creative drinks and or dishes. Whatever it is, own it, merchandise it, make it yours and get people talking about it.Take Good care of your Customers:
The fastest way to succeed as a restaurant is to provide your customers the great experience they expect. Keeping returning customers loyal is more important than attracting new customers who will never come back. Consistency is key here. If you consistently offer them great food, great service, and a great atmosphere, they will be sure to keep coming back for more.Location:
Almost 90% successful restaurants in the country have one thing in common between them. All are based in prime locations with very high footfall. Any restaurateur will tell you that the key to establishing a restaurant is ‘good location’. Location plays an integral part in driving people to the establishment. Locations with heavy footfall like Thamel is one that is easily accessible by all and located in an environment that is appreciable by people of all kinds. However, finding the right location is also the most difficult aspect of running a restaurant. Especially in Nepal, given the expensive real estate, not everyone can afford to establish his or her business in a prime location.
Easy accessibility to the restaurant and the parking space around it is an essential aspect of restaurant site selection that must not be ignored. If the customers are not able to reach the restaurant quickly, they are more likely to choose a different restaurant to dine all together.
Be Proactive about Accounting:
As Benjamin Franklin once said, “A place for everything, and everything in its place.” This goes for physical items as well as accounting procedures and standard operating procedures. Clearly communicate the expectations, follow through, be organized, label everything, set pars, forecast your sales and set goals. This starts with really knowing your business, getting your hands dirty and having your finger on the pulse of your business. Set up systems for everything and continually enforce them.
Cost Controlling:
The first step of restaurant price control is tracking and controlling your inventory. It is essential to track the daily Stock-in and Stock-out and the actual consumption throughout the day. The raw materials should be ordered and purchased keeping the yield of the items in mind. (Yield management is an integral part of food cost control as it gives you the idea of how much quantity of raw materials would be used to prepare a particular food item.) Controlling wastage through portion size control (Overproduction and big portions are the signs of wastage that lead to escalating food costs.)
Evaluate Your Staff Performance To Increase Efficiency- The overall efficiency of your staff would improve and this would help you cut down your labor costs.
Don't Miss the Finer Details:
In spite of taking care of all the above, your restaurant may fail to impress customers, creating a dent in your reputation. The reason could be the fine details that you didn’t consider essential to your restaurant’s success or probably didn’t pay attention to on a particular day but irked your customers enough not to come back. These could be –
· Soiled linens and cutlery
· Greasy fingerprints on the menu card
· Unhygienic conditions
· Dirty washrooms
· Cutlery, paper napkins, or cruet-set missing on the tables.
Conclusion:
The restaurant’s reputation as a venue for an enjoyable time also plays a big part in grabbing the attention of customers. Especially in this digital age where one bad review for the restaurant can have a ripple effect amongst all potential customers as their opinions may be swayed from one bad review. But if you can apply all given points in your restaurant /hotels I am pretty sure your establishment will be the best of the Town.
Thank you !
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